About Sahiwal Cattle:
- It is considered to be one of the best milch cattle breed of India.
- The breed derives its name from Sahiwal area in Montgomery district of Punjab in Pakistan.
- Other Names: These animals are also known as “Lambi Bar”, “Lola”, “Montgomery”, “Multani” and “Teli”.
- Appearance
- The cows are brownish red in colour; shades may vary from a mahogany red brown to more greyish red.
- Extremities in bulls are darker than rest of body colour. Occasionally there are white patches.
- Its unique traits are, tick-resistant, heat tolerant, high milk production and noted for its high resistance to parasites, both internal and external
- Due to their heat tolerance and high milk production they have been exported to other Asian countries as well as Africa and the Caribbean.
What is Ovum Pick-Up-In Vitro Fertilization (OPU-IVF) Technology?
- Ovum Pick-Up (OPU) is one of the recent and remarkable technologies in the field of reproductive biotechnology.
- It allows the collection of oocytes from the ovaries of live animals of known pedigree and additionally decreases the interval between generations.
- This procedure can be performed on pregnant animals less than 100 days in gestation.
- In OPU, ovarian follicles are punctured in a live animal with the help of a needle attached to a vacuum pump after visualizing them through ultrasonography.
- The oocytes obtained are then subjected to in vitro maturation (IVM), in vitro fertilization (IVF) and culture (IVC) for embryo production.
- The embryos thus produced can then be transferred to suitably synchronized recipients for producing offspring of known pedigree.
